A short blog this week – life is getting away from me.Tonight we went over the second 2005 Close Reading on comets and asteroids, reading the marking instructions and considering what we could learn from them.
We then studied the poem “Cynddyllan on a Tractor” by RS Thomas about Cynddyllan (pronounced Cun-thullan) the Welsh farmer, on his very first tractor.
We decided that this would be suitable for a question on (among other things) the world of work, modern life, technology, contrast, colloquial language, imagery, a person….
We finished reading “A View from the Bridge”, with magnificent final performances from the actors, and discussed the technical terms. I handed out notes (please ask me for these if you weren’t there).
Homework – please write a critical essay on either “Cynddllan on a Tractor” or “Hotel Room 12th Floor”, using one (or more!) of 2005 question 12 or 14, or 2006 question 12.
Remember that for poetry essays, you must quote a lot – the essays are always going to ask you to discuss the poetic techniques, which you can hardly discuss without quoting. The usual way to deal with poetry essays is to go through the poem more or less line by line – NOT by doing what the SQA calls a “guided tour” (of everything about the poem with nothing made relevant to the question) BUT by picking out things relevant to the question and making this relevance quite obvious.
Remember that for poetry essays, you must quote a lot – the essays are always going to ask you to discuss the poetic techniques, which you can hardly discuss without quoting. The usual way to deal with poetry essays is to go through the poem more or less line by line – NOT by doing what the SQA calls a “guided tour” (of everything about the poem with nothing made relevant to the question) BUT by picking out things relevant to the question and making this relevance quite obvious.
NEXT WEEK - ESSAY REASSESSMENT (REFLECTIVE/ARGUMENTATIVE/PERSUASIVE ) - CLASS STARTS 7.30 FOR THOSE WHO'VE ALREADY PASSED.
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